ABSTRACT
Regarding the ethical responsibility of historians, I have argued elsewhere that being a historian is essentially a matter of searching for historical knowledge as part of an obligation voluntarily undertaken to give historical truth to those who have a democratic right to it. Here such knowledge is analyzed, showing that moral or political evaluations inevitably to some degree suffuse it and that it cannot involve appealing to absolute factual or moral standards independent of honest and sincere professional judgements. While summarising the history of ethics, the ethical theorizing here is philosophical and follows the methodological criteria of analytical pragmatism, but that is not, for historians, some alien approach that involves a fundamental contrast with historical methods and assumptions. Taking into consideration historians’ views of other disciplines, I examine the possibility of conflicts between disciplinary approaches: History and ethics; philosophy and history; philosophy and science; history and science. I give a historical and theoretical outline for each perceived contrast, concluding that, rather than principled demarcations between them, factual and evaluative overlaps are shared by history, ethics, philosophy, and science. Drawing also on the philosophy of law, I show the weaknesses of the fact/value distinction and conclude that we need to adopt, as an ethical foundation, the view that the ongoing historical world is shared between us all and also shared between all disciplines. The ethical imperative to conceive the world as a shared unity should ground historians’ understanding and will also ground their ethical evaluations and other modes of historical judgements.
